THD Hotplates...

[toejam]

Re: THD Hotplates...

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I may be alone on this, but I don't like using hotplates with amps that have a lot of gain stages. IMHO it works best taming down amps like Super Leads, JCM 800's etc, but when I've tried it with amps like XTC, SLO, 5150, Dual rectifier, etc, I thought it sounded pretty bad.

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I agree. With newer amps, it's mostly preamp distortion we're hearing. The attenuators do more for amps with no master volume that need to be cranked for that power tube distortion.

[Soloist1]

Re: THD Hotplates...

Isn't the point of having a tube amp about "cooking the tubes"? The only way you'll cook tubes in the bad sense is if you are biased way to hot. The Hot Plate isn't going to put any more stress on the tubes than it would if it was dialed in to get the ideal tone in a large room atmosphere. You aren't going to get the tone the amp was meant to get unless you start getting power tube saturation. And the Hot Plate will definitely effect different amps in a different way. I use one with my SLO and it sounds great. There is definitely a point where attenuating the signal to much completely destroys the tone though. But I found a useable config that lets me crank the SLO and get a good tone at smaller room levels.